MÉLUSINE

SURREALIST IMPERTINENCE

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"Surrealist Impertinence", preface to: Jean-Claude Marceau, Unica Zürn and the Jasmine Man (the so-called schizophrenic), L'Harmattan, 2005, coll. Psychoanalysis and Civilizations, pp. 9-21.

A regular member of the Center for Research on Surrealism then of APRES (Association for Research and Study of Surrealism), Jean-Claude Marceau rarely intervenes in debates, but always to bring a precision all the more essential as he relies on a psychoanalytic practice. He regularly contributes to the journal Mélusine and participates in the decades that we organize at Cerisy-La-Salle. When he decided to publish his work on Unica Zürn, I could not refuse him the preface he asked me for and which allowed me to clarify the relationship between surrealism and Freudian doctrine. The task was facilitated for me by his thesis (I had sat on his jury) defended in 2004 at the University of Paris VIII, entitled: "The part of surrealism in Lacanian theory of psychoses and in the ethics of psychoanalysis". Here is the summary he gave with the reproduction by the Atelier des thèses de Lille: "This thesis proposes to question the relationships of the surrealist movement with Jacques Lacan's thought, concerning his conception of psychoses and the ethics of psychoanalysis. We first show that if surrealism has a keen interest in madness and psychoanalysis, its ignorance of Freud's ideas is nonetheless radical. The surrealist authors to whom Lacan refers throughout his work appear rather as dissidents of the movement: Dali, then the members of the Collège de Sociologie and the journal Acéphale, around Bataille and Masson. The paranoia that Lacan poses as a new founding paradigm of psychoanalysis also inspires Dali's paranoid-critical method and his critique of reality. But the mirror stage develops a Hegelian theory of madness that rejects surrealist marvelousness. Moreover, for Lacan, the image is to be apprehended in its signifying dimension and not as a figure, according to the surrealist perspective taken up by Lyotard. The surrealists' mad love, on the other hand, translates the search for a completeness that opposes the Lacanian formula: "There is no sexual relationship". The work of Bellmer, another marginal of the movement, and his companion Unica Zürn, a schizophrenic artist, constitutes an attempt to articulate the sentence and the body in a perspective close to the unconscious structured as a language. The surrealist revolt, however, proves unsuitable to support an authentic ethics of desire, as Lacan articulates it about Antigone. Lacan and surrealism: a misunderstanding therefore, but which proves fruitful. For the surrealists, unwittingly, have opened the way to the unveiling of the signifier, whose logic Lacan restores to us". Subsequently, Jean-Claude Marceau defended a thesis for the State Doctorate on "Deleuze and Lacan: the in-between of the unconscious" in 2013. See his contributions to Mélusine: Research page ("search"), type "Marceau" (melusine-surrealisme.fr)

Back cover: Unica Zürn was one of the muses of the surrealist movement. Companion of Hans Bellmer, this artist suffered from schizophrenia and met a tragic end by defenestrating herself. In her stories, she evokes erotic experience and childhood, her discovery of the adult world and her initiation to horrifying and fascinating sexuality, then to mad love. Unica thus gives us a superb lesson on love and psychosis. The story of The Jasmine Man, this so-called schizophrenic, is traced here in the light of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

Jean-Claude Marceau studied clinical psychology and psychopathology at Universities Paris 5 and Paris 7. He conducted doctoral research at the Department of Psychoanalysis of the University of Paris 8 Vincennes at Saint-Denis, under the direction of Serge Cottet, devoted to The part of surrealism in Lacanian theory of psychoses and in the ethics of psychoanalysis. He is a member of the Association for the Study of Surrealism.

  • CONTENTS-

Preface Surrealist Impertinence Introduction THE SO-CALLED SCHIZOPHRENIC The paternal metaphor and the foreclosure of the Name-of-the-Father On foreclosure Symbolic, imaginary and real in psychosis Enjoyment and logic of sexuation Of an impossibility of the sexual relationship The inter-dicted enjoyment The instance of the letter and the so-called schizophrenic Differential clinic of the so-called schizophrenic The materialism of the symptom: the letter and the anagram THE JASMINE MAN: A WRITING OF THE REAL A natal gap The Jasmine Man: HB The eye of the Other Being the doll The avatars of the eye in Hans Bellmer The doll's games Madness to the letter The little anatomy of the image Unica's anagrams Conclusion Bibliography

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